Losses are always hard to take and now Francis Ngannou has come out with a bizarre excuse as to why he got knocked out by Anthony Joshua in Saudi Arabia.
That was his debut contest in the squared circled and it saw him push Fury hard over 10 rounds, knock him down in the third and generally keep his biggest punches at bay whilst landing enough of his own shots to keep him in the contest.
As such many people thought he might be able to trouble Joshua in similar fashion when the two came together in early March. That is not what transpired.
Ngannou didn’t manage to lay a glove on the former two-team champion, was knocked down once in the first round, again at the start of the second round and then for a third, final and utterly conclusive time towards the end of the same round.
The French-Cameroonian has now tried to explain away his crushing defeat in an interview on his own Instagram Live which has been shared on TheMacLife.
“Leading up to that fight, it wasn’t my day. Not to say the result would have been different but it wasn’t my day. At any moment of the day, I felt like I wasn’t good to go.
“Even in the locker room, trying warm up, it wasn’t going well I was falling asleep. I was sweating but I was falling asleep. That’s why I took some time out for me, some time to reflect on everything that happened to me.
“Heads up to Anthony Joshua, they did everything right. Heads up to my team too, we did everything properly but I didn’t execute the plan because I didn’t feel present.”
He then admitted he will be back in boxing.
“I am not done yet. The only thing missing here was time. I will take some time for myself to chill, then come back to training to get ready for another challenge.”
Right now it is Joshua who has come out of this with all the credit, and Ngannou has plenty left to prove in the boxing.